[MD] The Relativist's journey

[david buchanan]

Steve said to dmb:
You are making huge unsubstantiated leaps here from Rorty's inability to "get anything over on the Nazi" to relativism as the doctrine that we shouldn't make judgments or that cultures can't be judged. Of course they can. Rorty says they can and are judged ethnocentrically. Do you have a non ethnocentric way of judging them. If you do, please provide it. If not, then please shut up about Rorty being a relativist. 


Ron replied:
Unfortunately Pirsig does say that cultures may be judged by their values; "a culture that values intellectual patterns over social patterns is a superior culture to one that does not" and that seems pretty ethnocentric to me especially if one takes what Pirsig says about some patterns being evolutionarily superior to others.



dmb says:
I'd certainly agree with Ron about the MOQ's ability to judge cultural values, but I don't understand why saying this would be considered "unfortunate", unless Ron means that it's unfortunate for Steve's case. I think that this ability is much less limited than the ethno-centric judgements to which Rorty's view would confine us. I think the MOQ's evolutionary morality is the non-ethnocentric way of judging that Steve is asking for. This ability doesn't depend on ultimate foundations of the kind that Rorty denies, and yet it escapes the paralyzing confines of one's ideological tribe.